A Glimpse At First Portable Computer

The first portable computer was so huge… It was like the size of a suitcase !

Osborne 1 (in opened form)

Osborne 1 is known to be first portable computer. It was released on April 1981 by Osborne Computer Corporation. Adam Osborne was the creator of the Osborne 1. The price of it was $1,795 and its weight was about 24.5 pounds or 11 kg!

The specification was:

4.0 MHz Processor Speed
64 Kilo RAM
5 inch monitor
OS: CP/M (what the hell is that?!)
Storage: Two 100K floppy disk drives

Adam Osborne

Osborne 1 was successful generating a sales of about $5.8 million in the year 1981. But later they faced fierce competition with Kaypro Computer, Apple computer, IBM PC and Compaq who offered faster PC, larger software library and larger display. The fate of Osborne Computer Corporation changed in the 1983. It was largely due to announcement of the upcoming product before their release by OCC. As a result the demand for the company’s existing product fell rapidly. Unsold product accumulated and due to fall in the price of the existing product, the company continued to have loss and finally declared bankruptcy in September 13, 1983. It is not clear whether the company was bankrupt due to preannouncement but some newer sources said that real bankruptcy was due to management errors.